Let’s Talk Enchanting!

NiKr wrote: »

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Just as a curiosity, did they always just OE w/o backups or did they always have them, or somewhere in-between?

What is a 'backup' to you?

It's a pyramid, in BDO.

If you have +18 (TRI) Gear, and you want to attempt +19 (TET) gear, while not losing power, you must obtain a second piece of +18 (TRI) Gear.

Except that to get that, you had to have a backup DUO gear.

And to get that you had to have a backup PRI gear (until you are higher level).

It works, it's just UNFAIR in a way that is hard to explain to someone with your mindset on PLAYING these games.

The people are not necessarily quitting because they 'Blew up their TRI and it went back to DUO' or even that they don't have a backup.

They are quitting because they want to participate in content that goes MUCH better with TET gear and every time they try to Enhance it they fail, then have to use the same annoying streaky system to get a new backup.

If this is somehow NOT what L2 does, please explain it precisely.

The lower bound at which BDO items do not lose their enchantment is PRI. Your base chance of upgrading from PRI to DUO is about 20%.

Azherae wrote: »

If this is somehow NOT what L2 does, please explain it precisely.

It is a pyramid, but for top lvl gear instead of being insanely high OE lvls, it'd be smth like +5 or +6, where +3 is the safe enchant, so your pyramid is really low. And usually people with those weapons would either go for a scroll that just resets the enchant lvls instead of destroying the weapon, but those are very rare so it's not like every other OE happens through their use.

Or as hapy said, you have a "raw" version of your weapon/gear (no horizontal enchantments no nothing, which makes it quite a bit cheaper) and you just risk that one instead of your main.

And yes, those who hate grinding would obviously hate this kind of system. But again, in L2 you didn't need to have some +6 uberweapon to clear content or win in pvp, so people didn't feel too bad if they went back to +3 instead of to +6.

As I've been saying since the very beginning of this thread - for me OE is the last step in your character's progress. It gives you marginal power growth for a huge cost, but when you're already at the very top, even 1-3% of power could give you an upper hand in pvp, and from what I understand of usual "top difficulty pve" - the same applies there. As we've already discussed with you, BDO's gear design fucks up this system so much that it feels waaay worse than L2's ever did, because you feel like you HAVE TO OE to progress, and iirc in some places you literally have to.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

L2's pve didn't require you to OE, so usually only the ones who wanted to do it went for it. And they go through a ton of gear/mat sinks to go up even a few steps. And while they were sinking a ton of resources at their top lvl of progress, everyone else was just catching up to their base lvl, so, in the long run, OE equalized power lvl on the server (which is one of the features I listed a few pages back).

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

If this is somehow NOT what L2 does, please explain it precisely.

It is a pyramid, but for top lvl gear instead of being insanely high OE lvls, it'd be smth like +5 or +6, where +3 is the safe enchant, so your pyramid is really low. And usually people with those weapons would either go for a scroll that just resets the enchant lvls instead of destroying the weapon, but those are very rare so it's not like every other OE happens through their use.

Or as hapy said, you have a "raw" version of your weapon/gear (no horizontal enchantments no nothing, which makes it quite a bit cheaper) and you just risk that one instead of your main.

And yes, those who hate grinding would obviously hate this kind of system. But again, in L2 you didn't need to have some +6 uberweapon to clear content or win in pvp, so people didn't feel too bad if they went back to +3 instead of to +6.

As I've been saying since the very beginning of this thread - for me OE is the last step in your character's progress. It gives you marginal power growth for a huge cost, but when you're already at the very top, even 1-3% of power could give you an upper hand in pvp, and from what I understand of usual "top difficulty pve" - the same applies there. As we've already discussed with you, BDO's gear design fucks up this system so much that it feels waaay worse than L2's ever did, because you feel like you HAVE TO OE to progress, and iirc in some places you literally have to.

Then the question is back to the same one as always, and I truly thank you for the input.

This technically means that the Enhancing System is not the flaw, the content 'gating' is. I know this, but then one must question, is this form of content 'gating' innate to MMOs? I would argue that for Fantasy MMOs with open world builds, it is, but I hope to be proven wrong.

I do not know of a reasonable way to build challenging PvE Content where a player with the equivalent of a +3 gear piece is able to perform effectively compared to a +6 gear piece without either:

1. Giving the +6 Player a massive boost by simply improving their efficiency.
or
2. Having the +6 Player be BORED due to ease of content and therefore more willing to OE gear just for the chance of being returned to the state of having something interesting to do.

I know people who have experienced both of these in BDO during the time before they were willing to add high end content on Console. Basically, the hardcore players hit the end fast and then had nothing to do because 'there were not enough non-hardcore players to justify adding the next tier of content'.

The result was catastrophic in my opinion. The few 'diehard tryhards' just used their additional power to overwhelm the economy and save up for the moment that new content was released, and then as soon as it was, blitzed their way to having the best gear for that too. Now, the system PROBABLY prevented a situation in which ALL of those players succeeded (EDIT for Clarity Was Here). Did those players enjoy that? Who knows.

The complaints though, were obvious. And the complaints of 'top players' spread to the non-playing community that one hopes will eventually get interested in your game.

"This is boring."
"Pearl Abyss is holding us back."
"Caphras when?" (this is a game specific 'meme')

The psychology of this is imo, terrible. There are entire zones in BDO that time was spent to create that maybe 3% of players can reasonably access. This is fine, technically. What is not fine, in this paradigm, is that the player who WANTS to push to access this content, is THEN gated by RNG.

But if their alternative is 'just don't add more content', then what's the point?

tl;dr if OE gear is not required, OE success players win by being so strong that they have efficiency boosts. Winner decided by RNG, even amongst the top.
If OE gear IS required, OE success players win by having access to better grindspots than others. Winner decided by RNG, ESPECIALLY amongst the top.

Hopefully this doesn't matter. But it's also, from every angle I can see, unnecessary, and your system is better. I'm mostly saying 'don't go defending L2's system and saying it's much different from BDO', because it apparently really is not, the GAME is different, and not necessarily in a good way, as its PvE experience is ... lackluster, which may be the thing ALLOWING basic OE to work.

Azherae wrote: »

I do not know of a reasonable way to build challenging PvE Content where a player with the equivalent of a +3 gear piece is able to perform effectively compared to a +6 gear piece without either.
1. Giving the +6 Player a massive boost by simply improving their efficiency.
or
2. Having the +6 Player be BORED due to ease of content and therefore more willing to OE gear just for the chance of being returned to the state of having something interesting to do.

Is top lvl content in BDO in any way party-related? Or is it still solo farming spots?

Cause I feel like reliance on the trinity+buffers of L2 allowed OEing to not influence ease of pve too much. Yes, you'd kill mobs maybe 1-3 secs faster, but you could only do that because you had your full buffs, a tank/bard kiting them around and a healer behind you if you needed it. You super cool OE gear didn't contribute all that much.

So I think Intrepid just needs to properly design mobs around classes and their potential combinations (which is obviously a difficult task to pull off well enough). Give mobs some growing resistances against weapons that hit them the hardest in the party. Maybe do it in an "evolution" way, where, the more one party grinds the same group of mobs (if that is even viable) - the higher those mobs' resistance to the gear used would be. So you'd either have to change out DPS' weapons (at which point you lose your OE) or you'd have to move to some other place (which might not be optimal/desired farm).

Though obviously that's the plainest and easiest way to put a soft lock on OE powers. Ideally you'd have some cool mechanics and combat abilities for mobs that make it harder for parties to farm them and requires everyone to excel at their role and not just make the OE boi the star.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I do not know of a reasonable way to build challenging PvE Content where a player with the equivalent of a +3 gear piece is able to perform effectively compared to a +6 gear piece without either.
1. Giving the +6 Player a massive boost by simply improving their efficiency.
or
2. Having the +6 Player be BORED due to ease of content and therefore more willing to OE gear just for the chance of being returned to the state of having something interesting to do.

Is top lvl content in BDO in any way party-related? Or is it still solo farming spots?

Cause I feel like reliance on the trinity+buffers of L2 allowed OEing to not influence ease of pve too much. Yes, you'd kill mobs maybe 1-3 secs faster, but you could only do that because you had your full buffs, a tank/bard kiting them around and a healer behind you if you needed it. You super cool OE gear didn't contribute all that much.

So I think Intrepid just needs to properly design mobs around classes and their potential combinations (which is obviously a difficult task to pull off well enough). Give mobs some growing resistances against weapons that hit them the hardest in the party. Maybe do it in an "evolution" way, where, the more one party grinds the same group of mobs (if that is even viable) - the higher those mobs' resistance to the gear used would be. So you'd either have to change out DPS' weapons (at which point you lose your OE) or you'd have to move to some other place (which might not be optimal/desired farm).

Though obviously that's the plainest and easiest way to put a soft lock on OE powers. Ideally you'd have some cool mechanics and combat abilities for mobs that make it harder for parties to farm them and requires everyone to excel at their role and not just make the OE boi the star.

Right but then I ask, why do all this to protect a system that by the nature of what you are doing, you are TRYING to negate? Why not just... not add it?

I'm not even disagreeing with you. I would play that game, I DO play that game (FFXI does this in different ways in various places). But FFXI therefore doesn't HAVE much that can be considered 'OE' because there's no need to build a system of that type when your content is actively opposing it. Who are you building it for?

If the content is so enjoyable without the OE power, the point of the system would be entirely back to:

"Giving a rush to gamblers and bored people who want to throw away their money."
"Taking materials out of the economy via those gamblers and bored people."

Part of why I never actually enchant in BDO is exactly this. I don't CARE about the content, the only reason I'd have to care is because someone with better gear will PvP me and annoy me.

If you're not giving people power over others in PvP, efficiency, extra money, or even additional satisfaction in PvE encounters because they're so good without it... just don't add it?

Azherae wrote: »

If you're not giving people power over others in PvP, efficiency, extra money, or even additional satisfaction in PvE encounters because they're so good without it... just don't add it?

But you do get pvp benefits from having OE gear. Yes, they're small, but as I said, when you're at the top, each % matters. If it's a 1v1 same class matchup in arena, you might have a crit just bigger enough than your opponent to kill him before he kills you.

And if it's a party v party, your few % of power can be amplified by buffers and you now might get crits that can kill an enemy in 30 secs instead of 40 secs (and that's huuuge in pvp).

And if it's a huge pvp in a siege, with all tiers of gear on your enemies, your hits might oneshot some robe-wearing boi few tiers below you, while you might've not done so before. And your dps throughout the siege is way bigger now, because your 3% from OE applies to each your hit against each enemy, and that shit builds up over time.

And what's most important for me personally - a meaningful treadmill. Grinding some pve just to upkeep my gear is cute and all, but I'd rather aim for smth higher than that. Obviously I'm in the minority here, but it's not like there's no other mechanics that appeal to minor parts of the mmo gamer group.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

If you're not giving people power over others in PvP, efficiency, extra money, or even additional satisfaction in PvE encounters because they're so good without it... just don't add it?

But you do get pvp benefits from having OE gear. Yes, they're small, but as I said, when you're at the top, each % matters. If it's a 1v1 same class matchup in arena, you might have a crit just bigger enough than your opponent to kill him before he kills you.

And if it's a party v party, your few % of power can be amplified by buffers and you now might get crits that can kill an enemy in 30 secs instead of 40 secs (and that's huuuge in pvp).

And if it's a huge pvp in a siege, with all tiers of gear on your enemies, your hits might oneshot some robe-wearing boi few tiers below you, while you might've not done so before. And your dps throughout the siege is way bigger now, because your 3% from OE applies to each your hit against each enemy, and that shit builds up over time.

And what's most important for me personally - a meaningful treadmill. Grinding some pve just to upkeep my gear is cute and all, but I'd rather aim for smth higher than that. Obviously I'm in the minority here, but it's not like there's no other mechanics that appeal to minor parts of the mmo gamer group.

Oh, well I'd be fine with that, except now you've effectively said 'if you're luckier you get PvP benefits'. I'd opt out of that game if I was unlucky or lucky and probably play more if I was average until I started to lose to lucky people, then stop.

To each their own.

Azherae wrote: »

Oh, well I'd be fine with that, except now you've effectively said 'if you're luckier you get PvP benefits'. I'd opt out of that game if I was unlucky or lucky and probably play more if I was average until I started to lose to lucky people, then stop.

To each their own.

I mean, even w/o luck, you'd still need a ton of time to just get to that top gear. So that already removes 90++% of the playerbase. And then you're just playing a 4x strategy, where you gotta control resources flows, money expenditures, people resources and farm locations control. If you manage to achieve most/all of those - you won't even need luck. But at that point you're also dominating most of the server so you might not even need the OE (unless you're the person who likes it).

And like I've said before, I've seen people overcoming RPS balancing through OE and I've seen OEd people lose to non-OEd ones due to the latter one's skill.

At the end of the day it's all about the overall balancing of everything. If additional 3% of gear power makes you a bit too OP, I'd say that's a design problem. But if those 3% just give you a 3% higher chance of winning a, previously, 50% winnable fight - that's, imo, fair. Like Noaani said "in mmorpgs, the ones who play the game better win".

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Oh, well I'd be fine with that, except now you've effectively said 'if you're luckier you get PvP benefits'. I'd opt out of that game if I was unlucky or lucky and probably play more if I was average until I started to lose to lucky people, then stop.

To each their own.

I mean, even w/o luck, you'd still need a ton of time to just get to that top gear. So that already removes 90++% of the playerbase. And then you're just playing a 4x strategy, where you gotta control resources flows, money expenditures, people resources and farm locations control. If you manage to achieve most/all of those - you won't even need luck. But at that point you're also dominating most of the server so you might not even need the OE (unless you're the person who likes it).

And like I've said before, I've seen people overcoming RPS balancing through OE and I've seen OEd people lose to non-OEd ones due to the latter one's skill.

At the end of the day it's all about the overall balancing of everything. If additional 3% of gear power makes you a bit too OP, I'd say that's a design problem. But if those 3% just give you a 3% higher chance of winning a, previously, 50% winnable fight - that's, imo, fair. Like Noaani said "in mmorpgs, the ones who play the game better win".

I definitely don't agree here, and neither does 'Classical Statistics', but I've made that point enough times already.

"GM, 20d100: 49, 69, 33, 46, 31, 36, 34, 14, 34, 24, 14, 13, 66, 38, 24, 73, 47, 90, 28, 89 = 852"

Hope you didn't have to roll 10 or lower for your upgrade.

EDIT: Or 91+, for that matter.

Oh thanks for reminding me @maouw !

Hey Intrepid! I don't want your sparkles all the time, make sure there is a separate particle effect switch off button just for the gear 'rarity' and enchants vfx. The more layers we can turn off individually the better.

We have not received permission from maouw to share the quoted post.

OE in this case refers to 'A thing that is attained by pushing a limit through RNG'.

It being desirable is, in my perception, a negative.

"If you want that glow on your weapon you should make a backup, because this isn't intended for the average player, it's a way to reward those who take a risk. Go, Dice Roll!"

I think I'm not really following. Why add OE as 'the path to get a cosmetic glow'? The thing I'm addressing is never actually about the power gap the Enchanting system adds, that's just balance. I'm addressing 'why some players get to do it for much less effort than others with nothing to show for it and no alternate direction option. You play BDO, so you know how this goes.

If we assume that OE 11 requires rolling 60+ on a d100, and can be dropped to rolling 45+ by a $1hrFarm, OE12 is 75+, can be dropped to rolling 60+, we'll even be nice and say same $1hrFarm, and OE13 requires rolling 85+, can be dropped to rolling 70+ by the SAME nice $1hrFarm, the item is destroyed in all cases and an OE10 Item to start the attempt with is ANOTHER nice clean $1hrFarm...

Dice> GM, 20d100: 55, 9, 41, 9, 69, 34, 29, 77, 94, 23, 34, 44, 34, 98, 63, 64, 44, 9, 24, 43 = 897
This person gets OE 11 immediately, then wants OE12 so they buy OE10 again and raise it to 11, then attempt OE12. After failing roll #1 (the 34), they buy another OE10, upgrade it to 11 on the 77 roll, get to OE12 on the 94 roll, get another OE10, try until OE11 on that (so that they have two OE 11), get it on a 98 (ooh so close on that 45), OE12 again on the next roll, so now there's a backup, roll for OE13 once... nothing. Final result after 20 attempts is OE12 and a leftover OE11 (give or take strategy).

Total Spent, assuming that their 'Adding 15% chance scroll' was not used every time once they started to get higher, is 18-20hrFarm depending on strategy.

Dice> GM, 20d100: 63, 97, 56, 85, 37, 68, 75, 56, 26, 83, 88, 18, 97, 93, 74, 96, 61, 25, 19, 39 = 1256

I don't even need to calculate this person's outcomes. And I invoke my integrity to assure you that TODAY (I did this yesterday and got a relatively even spread over 11 separate 20d100 and explicitly 'cherry picked' the worst one on the curve because my point is that there IS ALWAYS A WORST ONE) these were back to back rolls from our DiceBot. The 'worst' outcome this player could possibly have is that they fail to use a scroll on that 83 roll and/or waste it on a new OE11.

You can just look at that and know the person is RNG-carried by comparison. Especially because of how human mentality to gambling goes. If you were a super careful person, within the first 3 rolls you have 3 OE11 and on the fourth you have your OE12 even if you ran out of ChanceBuffScroll. Total cost to that person $6hr Farm. If you were a 'crazy big bet' style player though, you could literally 'get OE12 in two rolls without a scroll' here. Total cost, $1hrFarm for the same RESULT as the first player, since they might just go 'ooh sweet a good day' and stop.

Good days do NOT even out across 'people', or bell curves wouldn't look like that.

So yeah, why make a system that randomly rewards players that is ALSO not going to give them ANYTHING of value if it fails? It may seem like other systems do this, but generally they don't, because if you 'take the risk' of attacking a Mob you don't know, you normally gain either exp and drops or just personal experience and a 'nice fight'/'interesting memory'.

In the case of OE, the player gets an explicitly negative memory. It's not 'an experience' that they benefit from or enjoy (masochistic gamblers REPRESENT! - if I'm wrong about that) as long as their goal was 'to get an OE weapon' and not 'to enjoy the rush of gambling'.

So if the OUTCOME of an RNG system with a LOSS and no personal experience/memory is DESIRABLE I would greatly prefer that less RNG was involved with it OR that a proper personal experience/ALTERNATE positive was the result.

Azherae wrote: »

masochistic gamblers REPRESENT!

Thath me!

And I personally took the losses as the sacrifice required for the potential beauty. Yes, losing felt bad, but L2 also had 60% chance crafting recipes so by the time you came to OEing your gear - you were more than used to losing mats.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

masochistic gamblers REPRESENT!

Thath me!

And I personally took the losses as the sacrifice required for the potential beauty. Yes, losing felt bad, but L2 also had 60% chance crafting recipes so by the time you came to OEing your gear - you were more than used to losing mats.

Haha, but on-topic I remind, I've got no problem with sacrifices, I've got a problem with Player A sacrificing 20h and Player B sacrificing ONE. I personally don't even put up with this stuff in single player games unless the action I am taking for 20h is one I enjoy enough to take anyway.

But I'm definitely selfish enough (you could say 'attuned to my own self-care') that if I was person A and knew Person B and they were my rival and not my friend, I will quit the game even though we BOTH NOW HAVE OE12 gear to have an even match with.

That is what people mean when they say a game 'does not respect their time'.

Azherae wrote: »

That is what people mean when they say a game 'does not respect their time'.

But in the case of a completely safe upgrade, what would be the "respectful" length of time required for said upgrade? Would it be 1h or 20? Cause I feel like it's usually 20, or every achievement is instead super easy and fast which is its own problem.

And if it's closer to 20 for everyone, then you're fucking over all the people who can't spend that time for an upgrade (especially if it's extra content and not a necessary one). So imo having a range for those things is fairer.

Now you could say that the game could have some skill-dependent range of time instead of pure rng, but this too would cut off a part of the playerbase who don't have that amount of skill or the time to acquire it.

Obviously this opinion comes from a person who's super used to rng mechanics in their game, but I think it's important to have a different outlook in such discussions